Fraud Headlines

2017 Articles

The lawyer, Evan Greebel, who was outside counsel to Mr. Shkreli’s former drug company, Retrophin, was found guilty by a jury in Brooklyn of charges he conspired to commit wire fraud and securities fraud,. (New York Times)

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil fraud lawsuit in Miami federal court against Robert H. Shapiro and Woodbridge Group of Companies LLC, formerly based in Boca Raton, over allegations that the business was a $1.22 billion "Ponzi scheme" that defrauded more than 8,400 investors. (South Floria Business Journal)

Between 2004 and 2016, Boyce, who was employed in the IT department of a manufacturing company located in New Castle County, submitted purchase orders for more than $6.5 million in supplies that were never provided to the company, according to the indictment. (Delaware Online)

A new division of the Securities and Exchange Commission dedicated to so-called “initial coin offerings” (ICOs) filed its first charges on Friday, targeting a scam that reportedly raised $15 million from thousands of investors by promising a 13-fold profit in less than a month. (Fortune)

A federal judge on Monday sentenced former U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown to five years in prison on fraud and other charges related to a purported charity for poor students that she used as a personal slush fund. (ABC)

Jason Holland was new to the art of defrauding trucking companies when he attended a training session on it inside the Knoxville headquarters of the nation’s largest diesel fuel retailer, and he was uneasy, recordings showed. (Knox News)

Romania’s anti-corruption prosecutors’ agency froze the assets of the powerful leader of the ruling party amid a probe into misusing European Union funds and setting up an organized crime group. (Washington Post)

The number of whistleblowing cases opened by Britain’s markets regulator has dropped by 40 percent since 2014, a sign that those who question corporate integrity face an increasingly hostile environment. (Reuters)

U.S. authorities have arrested Hong Kong’s former home affairs secretary and the ex-foreign minister of Senegal for allegedly leading a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme in Africa on behalf of a top Chinese energy company. (South China Morning Post)

Nine years after $4 billion in alleged embezzlement by the chairman of Kazakhstan’s biggest bank nearly caused its collapse, the legal fight over the missing assets is back in court in London. (Bloomberg)

Boulder police on Thursday arrested Andrew Baron on felony charges of charity fraud and theft in excess of $100,000 from Humanwire, a nonprofit he said he established to help Syrian refugees. (Denver Post)

Credit Suisse Group AG has agreed to pay $135 million to settle allegations that its foreign exchange traders deceived customers, improperly shared their information and tried to manipulate currency prices. (Reuters)

Saudi Arabia officials say more than 200 people have been summoned for questioning as part of a burgeoning investigation encompassing up to $100 billion in corruption-related wrongdoing. (Los Angeles Times)

Investors are suing Outcome Health, a startup selling ad space on screens in doctors’ offices, for alleged fraud and breach of contract eight months after pouring $500 million into the company. (TechCrunch)

The country's largest mattress retailer is accusing a host of real estate companies and executives, including its nationwide real estate broker, of a multiyear scheme that involved inflated store rents, bribes, high-priced gifts and kickbacks from developers. (BisNow)

It’s called the Paradise Papers: the latest in a series of leaks made public by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists shedding light on the trillions of dollars that move through offshore tax havens. (New York Times)

The billionaire owner of Insys Therapeutics was arrested Thursday and charged with leading a nationwide conspiracy to use bribes and fraud to cause the illegal distribution of a Fentanyl spray intended for cancer patients. (NBC)

Former HSBC Holdings Plc currency trader Mark Johnson was found guilty of fraud for front-running a $3.5 billion client order, a victory for U.S. prosecutors as they seek to root out misconduct in global financial markets. (Bloomberg)

FEMA is looking into cases of potential fraud following Hurricane Irma, specifically people claiming someone else used their social security number and birthday to file for financial help after the hurricane. (ABC)

A longtime aide to former Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering charges in a scheme to funnel charitable donations into the political campaigns at the congressman's direction. (The Hill)

Top-earning professional athletes can make millions of dollars over their careers, but a combination of short playing careers, excessive spending and financial fraud can combine to deplete or even erase those earnings. (RSM)

Hackers made their way into the Security and Exchange Commission's EDGAR electronic filing system last year, retrieving private data that appear to have resulted in "an illicit gain through trading," the agency reported. (USA Today)

Uber Technologies Inc., facing a federal probe into whether it broke laws against overseas bribery, has embarked on a review of its Asia operations and notified U.S. officials about payments made by staff in Indonesia. (Bloomberg)

Paul Mangione, the former trader, is accused in the complaint of misrepresenting information about the loans underpinning two residential mortgage-backed securities that were sold to investors. (Reuters)

Possible witnesses to the alleged looting of billions of dollars from 1Malaysia Development Bhd are too scared to talk to U.S. investigators because they fear retaliation, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. (Bloomberg)

As high water spreads from Houston through Texas and Louisiana, authorities are bracing for an inevitable wave of fraud and other criminal activity set into motion by Harvey's punishing rains. (Christian Science Monitor)

Hundreds of people including a blind man in his 70s were defrauded of $20 million to fuel a life of luxury for investment advisers arrested in Port St. Lucie, federal officials allege. (Palm Beach Post)

Forget the Powerball jackpot. Iowa Lottery officials are celebrating a victory this week in winning their long shot gamble to unravel a 2010 Hot Lotto mystery that became the largest lottery fraud in U.S. history. (Quad-City Times)

At a time when senior financial fraud is on the rise, financial regulators say those on the first line of defense — brokerages and financial advisors — aren’t doing enough to stop it, according to a recent survey fielded by the North American Securities Administrators Association. (Time)

The legal complaint filed in federal court in Connecticut claims that parent company Nestle Waters North America is bottling common groundwater that doesn’t meet the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's definition of spring water. (USA Today)

The move is part of a regional crackdown as China battles telephone and internet scams that have cost billions of dollars in losses, with fraudsters posing as government officials to target everyone from the elderly to businessmen with legal woes. (Reuters)

Fraud on Navy and Coast Guard contracts at Ingalls Shipbuilding cost taxpayers up to $11.3 million dollars, prosecutors have said, but the whisteblower who brought the wrongdoing to light paid with his health, according to his lawsuit. (Sun Herald)

A Canberra man has been jailed for four years over the torching of a Weston cafe and his role in an international banking scam worth more than half-a-million dollars based out of Greece. (Canberra Times)

German firms have lost millions of euros to organized crime in a scam dubbed "CEO Fraud" that uses faked memos from top executives to entice accounting personnel to transfer funds, Germany's federal cyber agency said. (U.S. News And World Report)

For all the high-tech wizardry of modern financial markets, there’s one corner of the commodity world that still depends almost entirely on printed paper — making it an easy target for crooks. (Bloomberg)

Poland's prosecutors said they have charged the former leader of a massive anti-government movement with misappropriation of the movement's funds and false statements in its financial documents. (News Tribune)

The last time Mohammed Agbareia was accused of fraud, he pleaded guilty, got a break on his punishment, moved to Palm Beach County and worked as an informant for the FBI providing information on “national security investigations.” (Sun Sentinel)

Judge Alison J. Nathan of the Federal District Court in Manhattan delivered a stern warning to prosecutors when she granted a motion by Benjamin Wey, a New York City financier, to suppress everything seized during searches of his office and home in 2012. (New York Times)

Portugal is investigating alleged appropriation of funds belonging to Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA that were channeled through now-defunct Portuguese bank Banco Espirito Santo between 2009 and 2014, PDVSA said. (Reuters)

A former Nomura Holdings Inc. trader was found guilty of conspiring to lie to clients about mortgage-bond prices, while another was cleared of all charges in a verdict that highlights the challenge of policing fraud in the market. (Bloomberg)

By late summer 2015, the men running bribery at the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht SA were plotting another operation—not to rig a contract, which was their bread and butter, or to meddle in the politics of a sovereign nation, as they’d done on many occasions, but this time to save themselves. (Bloomberg)

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the Securities and Exchange Commission must abide by a five-year statute of limitations in seeking “disgorgement” from those whose fraudulent actions resulted in illegal profits. (Washington Post)

The U.N. refugee agency said it has turned to Kenyan police for possible criminal prosecution of three staffers for allegedly carrying out threats, intimidation and fraud against refugees and other personnel at a camp in northwest Kenya. (Miami Herald)

Victims of Bernard Madoff's huge Ponzi scheme have so far received no repayments from the company the Department of Justice tapped to distribute $4 billion recovered from the notorious fraud. (USA Today)

Airbus has appointed an independent panel including two former ministers to examine its anti-corruption practices after Britain and France launched fraud and bribery investigations into the sale of jetliners. (Reuters)

Even after Volkswagen pleaded guilty to a nine-year conspiracy to dupe regulators and consumers, the carmaker has continued to insist that top executives played no role in the emissions fraud. (New York Times)

The beginning of the end of an Ohio man’s venture into the murky world of cryptocurrencies can be traced back to the moment investigators linked the 29-year-old to a ticket-fraud scheme nearly 2,000 miles away in California. (FBI)

Attempts at cyber wire fraud globally, via emails purporting to be from trusted business associates, surged in the last seven months of 2016, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a warning to businesses. (Reuters)

The lawsuit, which seeks $100 million and class-action status, was filed by Mark J. Geragos on behalf of Daniel Jung, a Los Angeles man who, according to the suit, paid $2,000 for a ticket and airfare to the festival. (New York Times)

The former executive director of a Salvation Army donation storage and distribution centre has been found guilty of a massive fraud involving selling donated items meant for shelters and food banks. (MSN)

The report found that companies with higher ratings for job satisfaction, “culture and values,” senior leadership were less likely to be involved in SEC fraud enforcement or corporate fraud class action lawsuits. (ValueWalk)

Vijay Mallya has spent a lifetime building a reputation as India’s professed King of Good Times, a flamboyant tycoon with investments in alcohol, an airline and an auto racing team. But his freewheeling, free-spending ways ended last year when he fled India under an avalanche of unpaid bills and accusations of fraud. (New York Times)

The new fraud-prevention tool is a “direct response to our community’s request for additional services to complement and strengthen existing fraud controls,” Yawar Shah, the company’s chairman, said in a statement. (The Hill)

The investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority relates to an attempt by Staley last year to identify the author of a letter that was treated by Barclays Bank as a whistleblowing incident, Barclays said in a statement. (Fortune)

Filings in federal court allege that the California Investment Immigration Fund sought money from more than 100 Chinese investors, and in the process helped many of them to obtain U.S. green cards through a visa program called EB-5. (NPR)

The number of debit and credit cards that were compromised at U.S. ATMs and stores rose 70% in 2016, according to an analysis by the analytics and data company Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO). (MarketWatch)

A Massachusetts man was sentenced to six years in prison after pleading guilty to helping to run what prosecutors called a global pyramid scheme that bilked its victims out of more than $3 billion. (U.S. News And World Report)

The former CEO of the nation's largest coupon clearinghouse has been sentenced to 10 years in prison and more than $65 million in restitution on wire fraud and conspiracy charges. (US News And World Report)

South Korean President Park Geun-hye was removed from office, as the country’s Constitutional Court unanimously upheld a parliamentary vote to impeach her for her role in a corruption and influence-peddling scandal. (Washington Post)

A proposed class-action lawsuit was filed in Detroit against the Colorado company that supplied the state's Unemployment Insurance Agency with the automated detection system used to falsely accused tens of thousands of Michigan claimants of committing fraud. (Detroit Free Press)

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it obtained an emergency court order freezing brokerage accounts holding more than $29 million of profits gained from insider trading in advance of the April 2016 acquisition of DreamWorks Animation by Comcast. (Forbes)

Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, the former chief executive of American International Group, is admitting to fraud under a settlement of a long-running lawsuit against the insurance giant filed by New York prosecutors. (CBS)

It may not have the grit and the glamour of film noir, but one of today’s most elaborate strains of organized crime drains about $30 billion from U.S. retailers annually, and without much consequence. (Quartz)

The use of fake or synthetic identities is actually scarier than it may sound, in fact, the fraud perpetrated by the cybercriminals behind these identities is costing the U.S. nearly $50 billion per year. (PYMNTS)

Panasonic Corp said its avionics unit is being investigated by U.S. authorities under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and that it has recently begun talks with U.S. officials to resolve the matter. (Reuters)

Somalia, South Sudan, North Korea and Syria are perceived to be the most corrupt countries in the world, according to Transparency International's latest annual review that draws on a mix of business and government sources for its rankings. (CNBC)

The adage that timing in life is everything can be especially important when there is a claim of fraud, because the window to bring a case can close quickly and decisively under the applicable statute of limitations. (New York Times)

Western Union Co. agreed to pay $586 million and admitted to lapses in anti-money laundering controls that allowed hundred of millions of dollars in prohibited transactions to be processed by the company. (Bloomberg)

The F.B.I. has arrested a Volkswagen executive in Florida, accusing him of playing a central role in a broad conspiracy to keep United States regulators from discovering that diesel vehicles made by the company were programmed to cheat on emissions tests. (New York Times)

Some financial institutions are now offering so-called “cardless ATM” transactions that allow customers to withdraw cash using nothing more than their mobile phones. But as the following story illustrates, this new technology also creates an avenue for thieves to quickly and quietly convert stolen customer bank account usernames and passwords into cold hard cash. (Krebs On Security)

Deutsche Bank AG agreed to pay $95 million to resolve a U.S. government lawsuit accusing the German bank of tax fraud for using "insolvent" shell companies to hide significant tax liabilities from the Internal Revenue Service in 2000. (Reuters)

Though India had no reputation as a large-scaleexporter of fraud in the past, it is now seen as a major center for cyberfraud, said Suhel Daud, an F.B.I. agent who serves as assistant legal attaché at the embassy in New Delhi. (Voice of India)

A dozen doctors, pharmacy owners and marketing pros have been accused of a kickback scheme that prosecutors allege involved a sham medical study used to bilk up to $102 million from the publicly funded federal health program for military family members. (USA Today)